What’s worse than being stuck in a middle seat on a commercial flight that’s packed to the overhead bins?
Not getting on the flight at all – being bumped, in the parlance – a practice that while rare relative to the number of air travelers is becoming more problematic in the sense that more passengers are being kept off flights against their will. Why is that? Well, the flying public is coming to realize that taking the airline’s inducement to voluntarily fly later can mean increasingly long travel delays — sometimes even stretching into days.
Fewer volunteers mean more involuntary bumps and more angry bumpees.
The New York Times this morning offers an intriguing inside look at why and how the airlines decide to overbook their flights. Included are a pair of informative charts, this one that shows bumping to be on the rise in recent years and this one that shows the balance-sheet math involved for a trio of real-life flights.
The bottom line: Yes, that’s what it all about, as airlines claim that if they didn’t overbook they’d lose enough revenue to risk bankruptcy.
From the story:
The effort at times pits a group of young math whizzes at the airline against battle-tested gate agents, who are often skeptical of the complex computer models used to predict no-shows and to overbook flights.
Some agents even take matters into their own hands, creating phantom reservations — Mickey Mouse is a favorite passenger name, for example — to keep the math nerds at headquarters from overbooking a flight.
“It’s a little bit of black art,” said Wallace Beall, senior director for revenue analysis who oversees overbooking at US Airways.
The story didn’t address a couple of questions that I’d like to see answered:
How does an airline decide who to bump? Random drawing? Last tickets bought? Last to check in? Heaviest to lightest?
And are any hardship pleas routinely granted? Weddings? Funerals? Pregnancies that could end before the next available flight?
Answers would be appreciated.
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